A poster for Sinclair Lewis’s play “It can't happen here” shows three officers with raised fists, and a fist raised toward them, ostensibly the viewer’s. It was printed in 1937 as an advertisement for the Federal Theatre Project presentation…

During World War I, state-sponsored images of raised, clenched fists appear in posters promoting the purchase of war, or “liberty” bonds. Printed in the decade after the socialist use, this poster insinuates that the visual power of a raised,…